In other words, this kingdom movement is bigger than your personal propriety. In other words, be the more mature, swallow your pride, and if they throw some bacon down - how about it!
So Jesus appears to be giving instructions that would go directly against what the Torah said; which kind of goes against this whole notion of: God would never tell you to do something apart from the Bible. That sounds good, and it's probably pretty good personal boundaries, but it just doesn't work all the time.
Last session we talked about Samson - was it God's will, to continually escalate something into violence? No, but God used the basic human condition to judge the Philistines.
The Bible says: “do not marry Gentiles”, and “stone prostitutes”; but the word of the Lord came to Hosea, saying: “marry that Gentile prostitute”.
The Bible says (the Torah says): do not - this is so good, you ready for this? This is so good. This is revolutionary - do not touch your own poop. It's a really good plan right? Yeah. Like when you're living, don't play with your own poop right? Don't go and do that - bad plan. And how many of you would have any problem with that?
No one's raising their hand, going: wait a minute Shane, you're putting us back under the law. We should be able to play with our own poop if we want!
Leviticus says: do not handle your own body excrement. But the word of the Lord that came to Ezekiel saying: I want you to cook food, and use your own poop as fuel! Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine me coming in here tonight saying: hey everybody, I got a project for us to do: on your way out the door, the ushers have a little Tupperware container for you, and we've got to all take a little visit to the bathroom. Then we're going to bring it back in here, we're going to cook ourselves a meal. We're going to see how well this works. God has told me to do that!
Most people would say: “God would never say that”! Well, be careful. If you want to say: hey, I'm not with you there - I don't think God's saying that - that's one thing. But to say: God would never?
God told the same guy: I want you to lay naked on your front lawn for 140 days - 70 days on one side, 70 days on the other.
Imagine driving by my house and... Shane, what are you doing! God told me to. People say: “God wouldn't tell you to do that”! He did to somebody.
Remember in the first Century, Peter shows up, and he almost starts a riot. What did he do? He shows up at a first Century leadership meeting, and he's chewing on some pork rinds. They said: what are you doing? He said: oh, Jesus showed up to me in a dream, and He told me: all foods are clean. Can you imagine?
Can you imagine, if like the Pentecostal Church World Council was there, and somebody shows up and says: oh yeah, I know it clearly says in the Bible don't eat pork. It clearly says that - don't eat pork; but Jesus showed up to me in a dream, and He told me I could.
We would have branded him as a false prophet; but we look back and we say: yeah, Peter did it, I can do it. We make doctrine out of it; but then we're hypocritical, because we say: “oh, God would never tell you to do something apart from the Bible”.
God told people to do stuff all the time that makes no sense. We've got to be springs, and not bricks. We've got to seek God. You say: Shane, how do you handle all that? I don't know - I just know it's there, and I know in this passage in Luke, Jesus Himself is telling 72 people:
I'm sending you out to pave the way, and when you get into these cities, eat whatever is put in front of you. Surely the religious leaders would have had a problem with that. Hey, that goes directly against the Bible!
He says: do a couple of things; eat whatever's put in front of you - which is bigger than just eating whatever's put in front of you. We read that command, and we go: oh goody, I get to eat. To them He was saying: grow up, suck it up, be mature - and if what they put in front of you offends - you suck it up, and be bigger than that. He says: eat whatever's put in front of you; in other words – fellowship!